She has since testified under oath that police put her under intense pressure not to mention the existence of a second man.

Yet the most intriguing unanswered question concerns the mysterious “suicide” of Franz Kröll, the allegedly incorruptible Vienna police colonel who headed the investigation into the Kampusch case until 2010.

That year, the Vienna state prosecutor gave a press conference at which he declared that the Kampusch case had been solved and that Priklopil was the only perpetrator. Yet Kroll was absent.

Six months later the policeman’s dead body was found slumped on a terrace outside his flat. Police concluded that he had shot himself in the head. But Kroll’s brother Karl does not believe he committed suicide. He points out that a notebook the police colonel used daily to record his thoughts, had mysteriously disappeared without trace following his death.